Biblical Foreshadowing

Hi, everybody! (Ha ha, you get my everybody joke when I have an audience of about three…oh, anyway…) This is my first post of 2012, so may I be the 1,203, 6783rd (approximately) person to say HAPPY NEW YEAR! [Confetti, please! Oh, wait? What's that? We ran out of confetti? Well, go buy more!] Sorry about that.  We’ll just have to go without confetti.

Okay, something really interesting today.  I think everybody (or, okay, maybe not EVERYBODY) in my church service kind of had this epiphany moment, which is pretty cool because Epiphany was two days ago.  But, yeah, you may or may not have noticed how Jesus references the “sign of Jonah.”  I actually didn’t even notice it myself until this morning when I was reading my Bible, and this was BEFORE church, mind you.  (I sound so old-fashioned…I love it!) Basically, Jesus explains it like: “Jonah was in the whale for three days and nights, and I’m going to be dead for three days and nights.”  He said that because the Pharisees kept bothering him for a miraculous sign to prove that he was “real.”  Jesus told them about Jonah and said that was the only sign they were going to get.

When I saw that in my Bible, I was like, okay, that sounds good.  I didn’t really think about it that much, though, because it was kind of anti-climactic.  All right, Jonah was in a whale for three days and Jesus is going to die for three days.  We knew that.

By now, if you’re experienced in this type of thing, you’ve figured out by now what I’m going to say next. Yes, I went to church and surprise, surprise, guess who came up? JONAH.  Actually, I think the point was that Jesus is in everything (even the Old Testament), and this is a symbol for how Jesus is supposed to be part of our lives, and how we can find Jesus in all of the Bible, not just the gospels.  We’re doing a whole series on it, so this won’t be the last you’ll hear.  But, the pastor was really drawing parallels between Jonah’s experience, and Jesus’s, and I went, “Ahh! That’s so freaky!”

I think my English teacher would be proud of me if I told him that I just found some subtle foreshadowing in the Bible.

Think about it…Jonah went on a ship and caused a storm.  Jesus did the same thing, not quite so literally, but he came to cause division (Matthew 10:34).  Jonah was blamed for the storm by everybody else on the ship.  Jesus was blamed for political problems and blasphemy.  Jonah was thrown off the ship, and everybody assumed he would drown.  Jesus was nailed to a cross.  Jonah was inside a whale for three days.  Jesus was inside a grave for three days.

Yeah.  So you see why that’s kind of…”whoa.”  Jonah was more than a sign.  Jonah was a huge hint.  I’m really surprised I didn’t see that before.  Anyway, it felt really good to be back and blogging again, even if I rambled a bit.  Hope you enjoyed. 

Good-bye, 2011!

I should know not to trust Google Translate, but sorry, I’m not multilingual! I’m going to say goodbye to 2011 in some different (and kind of random) languages.  Why? Because I can, that’s why.

Armenian: հրաժեշտ, 2011.

Bulgarian: довиждане, 2011!

Chinese: 再見，2011！

Croatian: zbogom, 2011!

Czech: Sbohem, 2011!

Danish: farvel, 2011!

Dutch: vaarwel, 2011!

English: goodbye, 2011! (I love how I had to check the translator for this!)

Estonian: Hüvasti, 2011!

French: au revoir, 2011!

German: Auf Wiedersehen, 2011!

Greek: αντίο, 2011!

Haitian Creole: orevwa, 2011!

Hungarian: viszlát, 2011!

Icelandic: bless, 2011!

Irish: beannacht, 2011!

Italian: addio, 2011!

Japanese: 2011、さようなら！

Korean: 2011, 안녕!

Latin: vale, MMXI!

Lithuanian: sudie, 2011!

Macedonian: збогум, 2011!

Norwegian: farvel, 2011!

Polish: pożegnanie, 2011!

Portuguese: adeus, 2011!

Romanian: la revedere, 2011!

Russian: до свидания, 2011 году!

Spanish: adiós, 2011!

Swahili: kwaheri, 2011!

Swedish: hej, 2011!

Thai: ลา, 2011!

Turkish: 2011, güle güle!

Ukrainian: до побачення, 2011 році!

Welsh: hwyl fawr, 2011

There you have it! It’s even alphabetized for your convenience.  With my luck, Google Translate is probably horribly, terribly wrong and none of these translations are right, but…I wanted to do something for the new year.

Here’s my new year’s resolution for this year: spend devotional time every day. I’ll just focus on that for this year, I guess.  I have been trying to have devotions frequently, but I haven’t quite accomplished every day yet.  Yes, I know that a LOT of people have that as their new year’s resolution, but I have never had it as MY resolution.  And…why not? Who says you have to have a unique resolution?

Anyway, I’d say hello to 2012, but that would take too long and too much of my laptop battery.    Maybe tomorrow.  See you later!

Fashion, Fairytales, and Glitter

Guess what we did at the sleepover? Watched BARBIE MOVIES! Yes, that’s right, boys and girls.  We were suffocated in songs ranging from beautifully sweet to utterly obnoxious, Barbie’s over-confident attitude, and…wait for it…GLITTER! We actually watched five movies, but at the same rate, it would take two more sleepovers to polish off my friends’ Barbie collection.

Oh, and I think I’m in love with Ken now.  I actually did a joyful dance at the beginning of “Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale” when Ken broke up with Barbie.  ”He’s available!” I squealed…but alas, they made up in the end, and at that moment I knew that there was no hope for me and Ken to ever be together.  Sigh.  I guess I’ll just stick to Flynn aka Eugene, okay?

So, here I am to share my thoughts on Barbie.

Something crazy is that I think that all of the Barbie movies that are actually set in the, um, modern/contemporary/REAL world, still have fairies in them.  I kind of guessed that when we watched “Barbie: A Fairy Secret,” but I didn’t think that “A Fashion Fairytale” would have fairies in it, too.  Oh, excuse me, flairies.  Yes, folks, they are called flairies, because they have flair.  But, yeah, I guess you can’t get anywhere in Barbie without magic and glitter.  (A trail of sparkles follows almost anything that moves, for example.)

Yes, yes, I know that Barbie is for little girls, and I don’t really mind acting like a little girl because, well, I have plenty of time to be old when I get old.  I’m not old now, so I can be mature when I need to be! Which is not at a sleepover with some of your best friends who happen to be younger than you.  Anyway, although one can only take so much glitter, Barbie is way better than most of the other stuff they have now.  Like vampires? Ugh, I’m not even going near Twilight.  Call me weird.  Yeah, I am.  At least the little-kid stuff still makes an attempt to incorporate morals, even if nobody is perfect.

Even though I’m not walking away from the sleepover completely inspired to design fashion and be unique and confident, Barbie has that effect on girls who are three or four or five or six.  So, thanks, Barbie.  (And thank you too, Ken, just for making my day with your adorableness!)

Best! Week! Ever!

Who noticed my Tangled reference there? Yeah, I do that a lot.  I’m kind of an obsessive Tangled fan, so all my friends and family (especially my family!) have to deal with it.  Sorry, you guys!

Anyway, this has been a really good week, mostly because I didn’t have to go to school at all.  Thank you, school board! Sunday was (duh) Christmas! It was great; I got some gifts I really liked, and even better, I got to spend a lot of time with my extended family.  I got to meet my cousin’s new son, who is adorable! And we actually had a cake and sang happy birthday to Jesus, which I don’t remember ever doing before.  Our family always sings “happy birthday” at a snail’s pace so that we sound like we’re mourning instead of celebrating, but it was cool.  We should do that every year.

I’m really learning to appreciate my family…I mean, kind of.  When you’re all at home together for a week, you tend to fight a lot, but mostly we’ve been spending a lot of time together, and it’s been a really great week.  The best part is that it isn’t over yet, we still have five (or is that four and a half, now?) days left! Today, tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday! Big thank you to the school board for that Monday, by the way!

Also, over the break, I’ve been finding more time for devotions in the morning with my new Bible (yes, new Bible, that’s not totally falling apart! It’s one of my favorite gifts.) That’s one of the other things that makes this week the best! week! ever!!

Plus…sleepover tonight! I’ll be back tomorrow with details!

Interesting…

When I was reading my Bible yesterday, I noticed something interesting… So, when Jesus was tempted by the devil, he had been fasting for forty days and forty nights.  Then it says that, afterward, the devil came to him and told him to command the stones to become bread.  Jesus refused to, saying that man does not live on bread alone.  Everybody knows that story.  But I have to wonder, why is that so wrong? Why wouldn’t he just eat the bread? Is bread evil and I don’t know about it?

I guess there are a few reasons.  I would say I thought of them myself, but I prayed about it (something I do a lot, since I don’t understand the Bible at all half the time) so probably God helped me out there.  :) Jesus might not have been done fasting, although forty days and forty nights seems long enough! It says afterward, but maybe it just means after that period of time.  Or, it could be that he had been planning to go and eat something, but when he recognized the devil, he would not listen to him and recognized that he was tempting him.  OR, maybe it was the “If you are the Son of God” part.  Jesus did that a lot; refused to be tempted into proving that he was the Son of God, even though he obviously was.  Probably because he was perfect and didn’t have any pride.

So…yeah.  And I think that even could be serving as a warning to us.  Something might seem innocuous enough, but if you look into it (and pray about it too), it could be wrong.  [P.S. I love the word innocuous!]  Anyway, after seeing that, I think I am going to be more careful from now on.  You could be being tempted and you don’t even know it!

Well, we are going to our annual [I'm not publishing my family's last name for all to see on the Internet!!! Sorry, stalkers!] Christmas party, where I get to see a bunch of relatives I barely know.  Oh, I know some of them, but others seem to remember me from when I was two years old, and are shocked at how “tall!!” I am.  First we have to drive an hour to get there, though.  Still, I like seeing my hugely enormous extended family, so it will be fun.

What a Coincidence!

You know that Christmas carol…that goes “celebrate the child in a manger, born on Christmas day.”  To me, that sounds like, “Wow, isn’t it a coincidence that Jesus was born on Christmas!”  Ha ha ha.  Totally.  Don’t you just love when that happens?

You know, I’m really enjoying writing for nobody.  Seriously, like nobody at all is reading this stuff.  Ah well, I shall perservere! I’m going to keep writing, a lot, so Nobody should be prepared to keep reading! Unless, of course, Somebody is reading this, in which case, leave me a comment!

And…today was just One of Those Saturdays.  Translation: I Did My Homework at the Semi-Last Minute, Spent a Lot of Time on My Computer, Read Sci-Fi, Was Anti-Social, and Am Planning to Watch TV and Stuff Later This Evening.  I miss my friends, though, already.  I hate this being-a-teen stuff, where you want to hang out with your friends but not your family, even though you love your family (probably a lot more than your friends!)  Oh, and I hate sleepovers.  At least, I used to, and I was discriminating about which sleepovers I hated.  Now I’m kind of neutral about the whole thing.  Oh, yeah, and that’s another fun part of Being a Teen.  Indecisiveness!

Wish I could write more, but my sister is kicking me off the computer.  *sigh* Can I help it that she used up my laptop battery?

Maybe Something Exciting Happened in Zimbabwe

Well, guess what? Nothing exciting happened today! At all! At least, not for me.  I’m sure something exciting happened to somebody in the world.  Maybe in Zimbabwe or something.

But for me, in my own little world, nothing especially interesting happened.  I had a pretty good day at school; I gave a presentation in history class, worked on my writing a little (okay, a lot!) and got a new science fiction book in the library.  (The Resistance, which happens to be the sequel to The Declaration by Gemma Malley, and both are good so far!)

Oh, yeah, and on page 15 of this really good science fiction book, I saw, “‘God doesn’t exist…everyone knows that.’”  Everyone, excluding me, because I very much know God exists? And excluding about a trillion (that was a random guess) other very smart people in the world? So, unless this book turns out to be supporting of God and this was just a character talking, I think we can agree that Ms. Malley needs prayer. Well, everybody needs prayer at some point, but you know what I mean.

Something I’m trying to do is to have something to do each day so that I don’t wake up in the morning and go, “Blah, it’s Monday morning.”  Or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or…wait, who says “blah” on Friday?  The problem is, I don’t do that much in my life. *long, loud sigh* Perhaps (yes, I just said perhaps!!) I could go, “Yay! Today is the day that I am going to study for my test in Algebra 2!”  Umm, never mind.  I’ll come up with something!

Speaking of Algebra 2 tests, I need to study for one right now, so adios! (The adios happens to be inspired by a Spanish test we had to take today.  Can I say “blah” one more time?)

Don’t hate me because I forgot to post for two weeks

Come on! I’m a busy girl! How could I possibly remember to post on my blog…and possibly find the time…in two weeks…

Okay, fine.  I’m lazy and forgetful, and I deserve your hating.  Just try to be nice, okay? Anyways, I’m happy because I had a good (albeit short) weekend, and had a good day too because we went to Cracker Barrel for lunch and I ate scrumptious buttermilk pancakes.  Yummy.

[Random, off-topic insert: What is up with short weekends? Bah, I hate how short weekends are.  I think we should have three day weekends, at least.  Right? I know we'd all appreciate that.  Let's petition whoever makes the calendars! We can get a thousand people to sign the petition and then maybe they will add an extra day to the weekend...! Yeah...that'll work.]

We also went to church today, and it was, ah, pretty cool.  The topic was “Unforgettable Love,” which in my opinion covers just about everything.  You hear about God’s love a lot, so it wasn’t exactly a new concept, but it was inspirational, not to mention fun (I love everybody at my church!) and we got fellowship out of it too.  So, church.  Yay.

I’m now on a blog campaign to get people to come to this blog.  I guess I start with my friends and move forward from there.  So…hey people.  If you stumble upon my blog and you like it, good for you.  Keep reading it, because I like an audience.  Well, short post! Have an enjoyable Sunday (what’s left of it) and an amazingly fun Monday morning.  (I know!! We love Mondays!!)

Cannot come up with new title for my blog

So here’s the basics! Read the “About” page (that’s what I call it for short) for stuff that’s “about.”

I’m a Christian girl who is not going to share any personal information other than my first name. (they didn’t give us all those safety assemblies at school for nothing!) Basically, I want this blog to have the four purposes of a theme (for those who have watched A Christmas Story, or whose sisters happened to be in the stage version, like mine!): to inform, to describe, to persuade, to tell a story.  At least, I think those are the four purposes of a theme.  Plus, to entertain.  Because I am SOO entertaining.  As a future fantasy writer, I need practice with this stuff, anyway.

Well, those were some random ramblings! First, a little about myself.  I love playing piano and singing, although piano ranks higher than singing. I play piano for my school’s jazz band and accompany our orchestra.  I also sing in both our chorus and our special ensemble.  I love my church and Jesus, and I try my best to share God’s love with everybody else! (Another reason why I made this blog)

It’s really hard being a Christian in a world that is most definitely what I call “not-so-Christian.”  I hope to help other people (specifically teen girls, cuz that’s all the experience I have) with this stuff, plus to post fun stuff as well.

So, that brings me to…I need a name for my blog, and I can’t think of one!! Ahh! *runs around the room panicking* I hope somebody is reading this because I need suggestions.  And this brings my first post to a close! I’ll be adding more stuff in the future! (And probably after church, because who says I can’t re-share what I learned there?)